The Background: There has been a growing trend to invalidate European patents by challenging their formal priority and using intervening prior art. The Technical Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office ("EPO") referred...more
Hosted by C5, the 16th Annual Forum on Pharma & Biotech Patent Litigation in Europe returns 23-24 May, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Amsterdam Central Station, Amsterdam with curated programing for you to gain the knowledge and...more
The Enlarged Board of Appeal (“EBA”) issued on 13 October 2022 a non-binding communication in the framework of the G 2/21 referral in relation to plausibility and the use of post-published documents in the assessment of...more
On March 10, in decision G1/19, the European Patent Office (EPO) Enlarged Board of Appeal held that computer-implemented simulations are not per se unpatentable and warrant the same treatment as other computer-implemented...more
The Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office has decided that the exclusion from patentability of essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals now also extends to plant or animal...more
Are apples different from pears? Or are they both just fruit? Or, as cockney rhyming slang would have it, are they stairs? These are the questions (excepting the last one) that the distinguished judges of the Court of Justice...more
Last month, the European Patent Office (EPO) issued the much anticipated Written Decision associated with case T1063/18. We have previously written about this case in our alert "EPO May Return to Patenting Plants Obtained by...more
The Situation: A recent decision by the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office confirmed that a 2011 ruling dealing with disclosed disclaimers does not overrule its 2004 decision applying to undisclosed...more
In December, we reported that the European Commission ("Commission") had issued an Interpretive Notice (2016/C 411/03) stating products produced by essentially biological processes should not be patentable. The notice came as...more
Beginning in 2009, the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office ("EPO") issued a series of decisions that essentially created a new priority law in Europe that allowed members of the same patent family to negate each...more
While the U.S. is still sorting out “natural products” jurisprudence under 35 USC § 101, the European Patent Office (EPO) is wrestling with the patentability of plants and animals, and has announced an immediate stay on all...more